New Startup website

The viral nature of the web makes it an excellent breeding ground for interesting startups.

If you have a cool idea, the web can help you spread it. That is, if you can communicate that cool idea.

A startup website has fewer seconds to make an impression than the site of an established brand. It’s critical to make those precious seconds count.

When your visitor arrives they will be asking “What’s in it for me?” With no time to waste, a hard-hitting home page will contain some, if not all of the following elements:

1. A tagline: A prominent tagline that fits within the overall brand messaging and communicates the benefit of the startup immediately.

2. Clear offering: Clearly express what you are doing, what your visitor can gain from it and how they can easily get it.

3. User-friendly interface: Consider load times, navigation, sitemap, prominent calls-to-action, and and intuitive layout.

4. A Quick Tour/Demo: Let visitors know what your product does easily and quickly through a simple video demo or diagram of your product/idea.

5. Social Proof: This isn’t your first rodeo. Prove it by displaying logos of businesses you have worked with, testimonials or evidence of press coverage for your startup.

Let’s look at 20 successful startup websites and why they work:

Votifi is a mobile polling and analytics company that facilitates political exploration and network building through their platform and related technology. As you can see, it contains all the components one comes to expect from a viable startup website – a tagline, easy navigation, social network links, and a clean, intuitive layout.

Dojo lets Fan Page admins create coupons, sweepstakes and more easily via Facebook Fan apps. Dojo launched with 6 apps and has 15 more in the roadmap. The branding of this startup is cohesive throughout the site, and fits with the Japanese theme of the company. Simple calls-to-action explain what you can expect from the service, and are placed above the fold.